How Obama Foreign Policy (Is Supposed To) Work
Keying off engagement as the one-word synopsis of Obama foreign policy, James Traub offers an assessment of how that's working so far. In his piece, Traub is careful to measure the administration on the basis of its own assumptions and expectations, and he resists the caricature that has clouded this debate. He cites the difficulties of grading engagement on performance:
But the math required to hand out such grades is complicated. Engagement can fail with its immediate object, but still reshape the climate of opinion; it can succeed in warming deep-frozen relations, but at a cost not worth paying.
Given the stakes, it's worth peeling the onion of the engagement strategy, for instance that reshape-the-climate idea.
The crux of debates over foreign policy approach and strategy is the question of how US aims can be achieved. What's the most effective way to induce others toward desired outcomes?
Likewise, the reason to dredge up the Bush record isn't to score gratuitous points, but to counterpose the contending strategies. The pattern with the previous administration was to insist that other governments do the right thing and do what the US says they should (the two being essentially the same thing). I call it a command-and-demand foreign policy. Presumptuous, yes, but lazy too. The moral clarity of issuing decrees from on high often seemed to me like it gave the Bush administration a convenient way to avoid the messiness of a search for solutions.
At root, engagement is an effort to maneuver the players, arguments, principles, and proposals toward workable and sustainable solutions. It's not about getting bad guys to capitulate to terms the US might desire but are wildly unrealistic; it's about confronting the given country with a compellingly reasonable idea that meets American bottom-line concerns. This is the nub of the disagreement between hard-liners and progressives: a) whether defiant governments will ever bow to reasonabless and b) whether there the US gains advantages by appearing reasonable in the face of continued resistance.
So, what are the predicates of engagement?
- The issue is the problem at hand, not the incorrigibility of the other guy. The real reason for conspicuous shows of respect isn't out of belief in the deep-down decency of every other nation's leaders, but to affirm the possibility of a diplomatic way out. As Jim Traub quotes Obama's Nobel speech: "It seeks to offer even the most ruthless regime 'the choice of an open door,'" Without this, the rest of the world will suspect the US of merely making a power play, and the target regime itself will have no alternative but to resist.
- The 'good opinion of mankind' matters. The name of the game is a united international front. The Traub piece rightly focuses on Russia's stance on the Iranian nuclear program as a key test of the engagement strategy. It's a question of whether Iran can depend on Russia and China to help fend off pressure, as in the past, or whether it confronts a strong and broad coalition of pressure. (The last set of strengthened Security Council sanctions against North Korea were a good example.) My own view is that any regime will find it quite difficult to stand the heat totally on its own, deprived of its last defenders.
- A reasonable compromise gives a basis for mounting pressure. When diplomacy is focused on proposals that accommodate all sides, it makes defiance seem more, well, defiant. When engagement works, the international community, not just the United States, feels as if they're being defied by the renegade nation. And as with the last UNSC resolution on North Korea, this makes it easier to keep ratcheting up the pressure.
Obviously this isn't a unified field theory for current policy, and there are policy challenges with even more factors in the equation. It is useful, though, to be clear about what engagement really is -- and what it isn't.
I suppose I'm guilty of this sometimes myself, so I shouldn't throw big stones. But what is it about foreign policy that draws people so incessantly toward broad, abstract and overly-simplified philosophical theories, manifestos and doctrines, and away from the discussion of concrete realities and means-end complexities? For example, if I have to read another article on the True Meaning of "Realism", I'm going to barf.
Could it be that the concrete reality of foreign policy is so bloody, ugly, uninspiring and filthy compared to people's need to believe in and worship among the mystic national cult, that the thinkers who study this are just can't handle the tension and incongruity? Or maybe it is like the situation that obtains in physical cosmology, which is constantly rife with wildly specualtive and empirically unsupported hypotheses. Like cosmologists, foreign-policy folks love the "big picture".
Obama's speech just wasn't that interesting, and contained nothing novel. It was just the usual, boring something-for-everyone foreign policy sermon full of pious doctrine and deftly-split scholastic hairs.
December 20, 2009 9:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
So you don't buy the idea that the new guys are trying something here? There's no real conscious strategy at work?
December 20, 2009 10:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, I think there is some sort of strategy, David. But the strategy doesn't involve any interesting new ideas or theoretical innovations. There are no bold departures, and not much discernible difference in the overall strategic direction. There is no subtle and awesome new "Obama Doctrine" that needs to be explained and interpreted for the benefit of the unenlightened. There are just some difference in the way the suite of available tools, approaches and tactics is being used. Obama plays the game with a different style than his predecessor, and relies on different moves at different times. But the major goals, assessments, narratives and broad strategic vision seem, depressingly, about the same as before.
There have been a spate of articles lately pouring out of the center-left foreign policy commentariat that are filled with overly-intellectualized variations on the same them: "Talking to people is good, 'cuz sometimes you get what you want, and even when you don't the rest of the world gives you an "A" for effort." Obama is hardly the inventor of this idea, and its not a complicated one, or even a controversial one. I would note, though, that a lot of this commentary has been downright groveling and apologetic in its plea to the tough guys to indulge Obama in faking the diplomacy just a little longer.
The one thing that might amount to an actual strategic difference between this administration and the last one is the administration's approach to nuclear weapons. That difference in the global non-proliferation agenda was the key change cited by the Nobel committee in awarding Obama his prize. This makes it doubly disappointing that Obama decided to squander a golden opportunity on a global stage to explain, promote and recruit supporters for his nonproliferation agenda, and instead decided to give a professor's lecture on recent innovations in just war theory, along with some gratuitous added remarks on the awesomeness of America.
Of course, if Obama had decided to talk about non-proliferation policy, conservatives like Bill Bennett and Charles Krauthammer would have made fun of him and called him a weak lefty surrender monkey. And that seems to matter quite a bit to Obama. He seems to be shaping up as a typical latter-day Democrat, constantly afraid of what the mean boys will think of him, constantly apologizing for seeking peace, constantly intimidated by military brass, constantly sensitive and threatened by attacks on his manhood, constantly looking for opportunities to display and impress them all with his toughness, preferably with a cruise missile, drone or other remote-controlled instrument.
It's obvious now that Obama and his beltway foreign policy College of Cardinals have come to feel embarrassed about talking to the Iranians - even though the actual "engaging" part of this "engagement strategy" has been quite minimal. There hasn't been much actual talking, but there was a lot of speechifying and talking about the fact that we were going to talk. And then there were finally a couple of days of talks, followed by a tentative agreement that was quickly turned into an ultimatum by our chief diplomats, delivered in a maximally obnoxious and haughty way, apparently in order to make sure that there was no chance the Iranians would humiliate themselves, and thwart our agenda, by actually accepting the tentative agreement. All we really wanted was our "A for effort".
Oh, and during this whole time we have been trying to bring down the Iranian regime through covert action.
I'm getting fairly fatalistic about this Washington mess. Washington conventional wisdom is what it is; the interests of established economic and institutional power centers, and domestic pressure groups, are what they are. The people in charge rarely discuss in public what they are really trying to do, which makes it effectively impossible to have a genuine and rational national debate on those aims. We wouldn't have any significant power over the decision making anyway, so what does it matter. I don't think it really matters much who is president. Maybe he'll kill us all; maybe he won't. But most of us probably have a lot more effective things to do with our time than talk about a foreign policy we can't influence.
December 21, 2009 12:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
Careful, Dan - if they realize we know it doesn't matter who gets elected, they just might have to get rid of us all.
American version of Chinese menu - 2 from Column A, 1 from Column A.
December 21, 2009 12:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
You got me to thinking of parallels between the Mandate and the infamous Poll tax.
December 21, 2009 1:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
Allow me to simplify the grading of President Obama on his engagement attendant to the present (escalating) war in Afghanistan, arguably the most important component of Obama foreign policy.
President Obama, March 27, 2009:
President Obama's performance on this pledge follows:
_________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________
None, that is. There has been no forging of a new Contact Group. None.
Surely, a diplomatic initiative is required for Afghanistan, one that would involve the other Asian countries that Obama mentioned, plus Russia. There has been no open diplomatic engagement.
Apparently this is just another broken Obama promise, gone and forgotten. The Contact Group he pledged to form in March, in his new strategy, received absolutely no mention in his newer strategy unveiled earlier this month.
President Obama's grade on engagement for Afghanistan? -- F
December 20, 2009 11:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Considering Obama's Nobel speech was a 4,000 word defense for our military/industrial complex, all this shit seems pretty noble. GO TEAM OBAMA!
December 21, 2009 4:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
Other commenters have made most of my points.
Obama is like a rhetorical shining wrapping on a political party consisting of a big package of nerf balls. Soft, easy to lightly and safely toss around, and completely useless in any game against hard balls.
The self-deluded activist recipients of this package might, in theory, take it straight to the department store counter to exchange it for some good solid ash bats and horsehide balls, but of course, it is difficult find a department store selling bats of real wood nowadays, or balls covered in real hide. In fact, its even hard to find a real department store.
So the activists sit around instead, under the decorated tree, nostalgically reliving the good old 1960s when the packages opened up had a genuine mixture of original and well-made balls, and they would get their hands on the superballs capable of really propelling all the others. Or they worry themselves sick about how the self-esteem of every toxic pastel colored East Asian sweatshop produced nerf ball might suffer if anyone ever gets away with making the slightest remark suggesting that any ball might not be fully equal to any other in its own especially empowered way. While waiting helplessly to get peltered by the bad boys from the down the block getting ready to come over and again (and again and again) hurl their rockhard spitballs and curve balls at point blank range.
December 21, 2009 5:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
So the only engagement that will work with Iran is cooperation, and not the continuing ineffective threaten-and-sanction regime, and the overthrow attempts, which have been a hallmark of the childish US policy for years.
December 21, 2009 11:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
Don, millions of people IN Iran willing for months to put their lives on the line in the streets, do NOT think that the corrupt regime there is a merely an Israeli-concocted pretend problem. The Problem with your way of thinking is that countries are not individual people. I am not saying that the neo-con paranoid trash-America's foreign-policy AGAIN by bombing a country that did not attack us notion is anything but idiotic. But the antidote is not to pretend that a crooked theocracy lying and cheating its way to nukedom is of no concern to America or the world.
December 21, 2009 12:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
PTroub,
That's an internal problem, exacerbated by an illegal US-funded destabilization program, which is really none of our business. Crooked governments are not exactly a rarity in the world, are they.
"lying and cheating its way to nukedom"? If you have some evidence of that you ought to give it to the IAEA and the CIA which would welcome it, since they have concluded otherwise. Are you withholding evidence, PTroub?
December 21, 2009 12:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Were the Iranian elections more rigged than the Afghan ones? The west deliberately ignored why Ahmadinejad might be popular. Reminds me of our involvement in Nicaragua where we shoved in the useless Chamorro, and as soon as we lost interest the people put back in the Sandanistas.
Perhaps we should focus more on protecting voting rights and preventing fraud in our own country and leave some self-determinism to the rest of the world. Democracy may not be pretty, but neither is a klepto-oligarchy.
December 21, 2009 3:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
No Don, I am not "withholding evidence" (after treating countries like people, now you want to treat people like governments!?!) and if you have meanwhile stopped beating your wife, we can perhaps resume the discussion about the current government of Iran which "threatens nobody" except the many thousands of its own citizens who are jailed, beat up, killed, or exiled for exercising free speech or preferring an economic policy that is not a disaster, or a foreign policy not run by Holocaust denial baboons. I don't think those clowns "withheld" evidence of the US embassy being full of spies in 1980, by the way (because there appears to have been no such evidence to withhold).
Now to your substantive point about whether there has been cheating and lying going on as part of Iran's nuclear activities. Here below are excerpts of a timeline I found from the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. It conforms approximately to my recollections, though I think they may have left out some parts about the Pakistanis. I don't really know who is behind CACNP but it looks highly unlikely to be an Israeli or AIPAC front (which flourish like weed especially in cyberspace). CACNP have an annual Robert F. Drinan National Peace and Human Rights Award; recent recipients include Ted Kennedy and Barney Frank. The timeline stops 3+ years ago, but I don't have the impression that clarity and honesty and human rights have been spreading all over Iran since then. Or that cat and mouse games with enrichment have ceased either.
And let's also not waste any time please with crap stock propaganda lines about "internal problems." Millions of Iranians have been forced into exile outside the country including a wide range of opponents of the prior regime under the US-supported Shah. And nuclear non-proliferation, and cheating on international agreements is certainly not "internal" either.
Quoted site:
http://irannuclearwatch.blogspot.com/2006/08/iran-nuclear-timeline.html
1968
Iran signs the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).
1974
Iran concludes a nuclear safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency as required under NPT.
1979
The Islamic Revolution topples the Shah's government. The government of Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan decides that Iran does not need nuclear energy.
Late 1970s
The US says it has obtained intelligence indicating that the Shah set up a clandestine nuclear weapons development program. According to Akbar Etemad, director of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran from 1974 until October 1978, researchers at the Tehran Nuclear Research Center carried out laboratory experiments in which plutonium was extracted from spent fuel using chemical agents.
Mid-1980s
Iran and North Korea begin cooperating on nuclear issues
2003
International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohammad El Baradei, accompanied by a team of inspectors, visits Iran. They report that while there is no evidence of Iran diverting nuclear material for building weapons, there are numerous causes for concern, including evidence that Iran had received information about casting uranium metal into hemispheres.
Iran faxes a letter to the United States through Swiss diplomatic intermediaries offering to engage in a broad dialogue with the United States, including full cooperation on nuclear programs, acceptance of Israel, and the termination of Iranian support for Palestinian militant groups. The United States does not respond to the letter.
November 2003
International Atomic Energy Agency concludes there is no evidence of a nuclear weapons program.
November 2004
Iran agrees to suspend most of its uranium enrichment under a deal with Britain, France and Germany, also known as the EU-3.
April 2006
International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei issues a report that he can not provide evidence to verify that Iran's nuclear program is intended exclusively for peaceful purposes.
July 31, 2006
The United Nations Security Council adopts Resolution 1696 under Article 40 of Chapter VII of the UN charter. The resolution gives Iran until August 31, 2006 to “suspend all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, including research and development” or face potential economic and diplomatic sanctions.
August 31, 2006
The IAEA reports to the United Nations Security Council that Iran has continued to enrich uranium despite UN calls for it to stop its enrichment activities by August 31.
September 19, 2006
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad maintains that Iran's nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.
November 23, 2006
The IAEA reports that new traces of uranium were found in Iranian facilities. The IAEA concludes that it “will remain unable to make further progress in its efforts to verify the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran unless Iran addresses the long outstanding verification issues, including through the implementation of the Additional Protocol, and provides the necessary transparency.”
December 21, 2009 8:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
One interesting phenomenon that occurs both here and many other places around the world is that young students protesting in the urban centers of foreign countries are frequently seen as the enlightened vanguard of liberty, reason and reform, and the courageous voice of the silent majority, while those protesting in one's own country are usually seen as ignorant and overindulged brats, representing only a pampered and self-centered minority of dilettantes.
Would that the beltway wise ones paid to defiant students in the United States one quarter the attention that is lavished upon the young heroes abroad. If US students twitter about a boycott of Israel, no one in Washington tunes in to their tweets.
December 21, 2009 6:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ptroub is right on this one. Your overly simplistic opening statement pretty much shot the credibility of your premise before it got started.
Are you freakin kidding me?
Threatens no one?
The Iranian regime has been sworn to destroy the US and kill Americans since it took control. Prior to 2001, terrorists had killed more US citizens than died on 911 and nearly half of those lives lost were at the hands of terrorist groups associated with the Reolutionary Islamic Republic of Iran. Do you have no sympathy for the innocent deaths of your fellow countrymen?
"Threatens No One"????
Never mind the attacks and threats they have made on Kuwait, Lebanon, and Iraq, just to name a few.
Take off your tinfoil hat and read a history book.
December 22, 2009 5:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
The slogan of the US Department of State is: "Diplomacy In Action".
US "diplomacy" toward Iran -- and with others -- was well-described by Nicholas Burns, undersecretary of state for political affairs in the Bush-43 administration. "Iran needs to learn to respect us, and Iran certainly needs to respect American power in the Middle East. . .Iran is one of our greatest concerns these days, and we're looking for ways to shut down any possible provision of capital or technology to the Iranians for their [legal] enrichment program . . ."
Has there been any change with the new administration? Any improvements in engagement? Any successes in "confronting" and "maneuvering" the "bad guys"? The 'math is complicated', particularly since there's been an abundance of confrontation but little to show for it.
As long as American Exceptionalism persists, as recently reiterated by Obama in Copenhagen, there can be nothing good coming from confrontational (as opposed to collegial) engagement.
December 21, 2009 4:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Round and round and round it goes, ignoring the obvious all the time.
I put a series of links together around the theme 'the U.S. grows impatient'.
If the same 'policy' is to be recycled for decades, it's embarrassing that nobody in the U.S. acknowledges it.To whit : the Third Pillar of the NPT is totally undercut by baseless caterwauling about the danger of an unarmed state from one which has total worldwide repeated overkill from WMD.This while the neighbours appreciate the effort of peaceful transparency - required nowhere - that accompanies nuclear power generation from the so-called 'Axis of Evil'...whose unforgiveable sin is that they make warmongers look the villains they are.
http://opitslinkfest.blogspot.com/2009/12/20-dec-mission-in-afghanistanetc.html
December 21, 2009 9:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
NPT, Article VI:
Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a Treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.
December 22, 2009 1:21 AM | Reply | Permalink